← all questions · The unaccredited years
They exist and none of them are free any more. GP is the biggest, and in 2026 a record 1,772 people started AGPT while a further 1,110 eligible applicants missed out 4. Radiology, ED, pathology, psychiatry, medical administration, private assisting and the CMO grade are the others 56. Each wants a dedicated year first.
Plan the exit before you need it, because every ramp now has a queue. AGPT is still the largest destination and it is no longer a fallback: 2026 saw a record 1,772 commencements and 1,110 eligible doctors who applied and did not get a place 4. Selection runs a nine-tier priority framework, so where you sit in that framework matters more than your score 1.
The ramps people actually took, from first-hand accounts across four years of the corpus: GP, anaesthetics, radiology, ED and critical care, physician training, pathology, medical administration, full-time private surgical assisting, overseas training, and law 567. Radiology departments are described as receptive to ex-surgical applicants, but expect one SRMO or unaccredited radiology year first 6. The non-specialist CMO grade is a permanent award-covered job in its own right, not a failure state 3.
The correction the sub upvotes hardest. "Revert back to anaesthetics" was the most downvoted framing in the biggest 2026 thread on this 5. Anaesthetics selection sits with hospital departments off a critical-care SRMO year, and it is competitive on its own terms. Nothing is easy to fall back into.
Attempt caps make the timing decision for you in some specialties. RACS paediatric surgery allows a maximum of three applications deemed unsuitable, and ASPS shows selection falling away by attempt — 15.19% first, 10.95% second, 4.24% third 2. Two-thirds of people who ever apply to plastics never get on 2.
The most-endorsed advice in the corpus is to set a written exit criterion — a year count, an attempt count — before you start the unaccredited years, rather than deciding in the week the rejection lands 7.
Nobody publishes where unsuccessful applicants end up. That destination data is not published.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
Anaesthetics is highly competitive - not "easy to revert back to" from surg
Transitioned to full time private assisting after quitting end of last year. Got full time regular lists from the get go but was private assisting on my weeks off when I was an unaccredited.
Lots became GPs. Most are happy (enough). Some aren't.
Applied for GP, but then missed out because of the increased competition
Asked 10 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was made
asked_count = posts in the r/ausjdocs dump (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(never|don.?t|didn.?t|fail|unsuccessful|reject).{0,35}(get on|got on|make it|onto training)|(plan ?b|backup|fall ?back|exit|alternative).{0,30}(career|specialt|plan)/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring first-hand accounts in the two 'what did you do next' threads, with the most-upvoted rebuttal to treating anaesthetics as a fallback.